ArcView Database Access 2.1e Extension (PC/UNIX)

Note: See the Database Access readme (Dbaccess.txt) file for more information about ArcView Database Access 2.1e for ArcView 3.3.

Database Tables

When you retrieve data from a database, you can see it in a database table. Database tables share the existing table user interface but do not support all of the functions provided such as indexing. A copy of your data is not written locally the way it is now using the SQL Connect functionality. You will only be able to see a portion of the retrieved data in one database table at a time, but you can increase the number of records displayed in the table as appropriate. You will be able to create database tables from database themes by clicking the Open Theme Table button.

Database Themes Display Query Results

When you query a database, you retrieve a set of fields and records. A database theme represents the set of records and displays the spatial data contained by one of the fields. The data retrieved can be the product of joining several tables in the database together. Creating a database theme is similar to creating a SQL SELECT statement. When creating a database theme from an SDE database, you can now specify spatial constraints in addition to attribute constraints.

Accessing Data From Many Databases at the Same Time

You can connect to many SDE databases at the same time. This means you can have several database themes visible in a view whose source data is located in different SDE databases. If you have an SDE connection to a database, you can handle nonspatial data using the same connection. You do not need to create an additional ODBC connection to the database to work with nonspatial tables.

Spatial Data Is Integrated With Attribute Data

In an SDE database, any table can be turned into a spatial table by adding a spatial column to it. Spatial data can be truly integrated in your database design.

Area of Interest Support

Since you can apply spatial constraints to database themes, we are providing Area of Interest support through Avenue requests only. Using the current functionality, when you set an Area of Interest, the same restraints are applied to all the themes in a view. This functionality is too limiting for database themes, which do not have tiles and which support theme-based Areas of Interest. Using Avenue, you can apply different spatial constraints to each theme in the view and multiple spatial constraints to one theme. The spatial constraints are not limited to rectangles, either; for example, you could create a spatial filter using a buffer generated around the selected features in a theme.